Deadline

“The public databases won’t have the emergency access tunnels,” said Kelly.

“It’s still never a bad idea to have a backup plan.” I flashed her a toothy smile. “Besides, the public databases will have full blueprints of the general-access areas, and that should be enough to jog your memory. It’s not that I don’t trust you to tell us the truth as you see it, Doc. It’s just that after what we learned from Dr. Abbey, I don’t trust you not to leave things out if you think they’re too sensitive for us.”

Her expression hardened. For a moment, I thought she was going to challenge my authority. The others saw it, too: Alaric pushed his chair back from the table by a few inches, while Maggie and Becks both stopped moving around the kitchen, their attention going solely to Kelly. The house seemed to hold its breath. Finally, grudgingly, Kelly shook her head.

“Fair enough. We’re in this together, whether we like it or not. I guess we’re all going to need to learn how to trust each other.”

“There’s the spirit,” I said.

“I just have one question,” said Alaric. “How do we know the CDC isn’t going to run an audio comparison on your call and figure out that Kelly’s still alive? The last thing we need is another major raid.”

“No, the last thing we need is them figuring out where we are. Them figuring out that the Doc’s still breathing is second to last, at best.” I pushed my half-eaten potpie away and stood. “I guess we’ll need to keep an eye on the news feeds, see whether anything comes through accusing us of identity theft.”

“Can you steal your own identity?” asked Kelly.

“Guess we’ll find out.” Becks moved to take my seat as I stepped away. “Becks, you need to update as soon as you finish eating. I’m going to go and get the untransmitted footage loaded to the server. Alaric, I want you cleaning and screenshotting inside the hour.”

“Got it,” said Alaric.

“I’ve got a few poems and a bunch of garden pictures to put up,” said Maggie. “I’m officially still in mourning for Dave, which is why I’m all alone here in my big, spooky old house.”

“Good,” I said. “Doc, work with Mahir and get started on another post about whatever the hell psychology crap you’re writing about. See if you can come up with a plausible excuse for why we don’t have a picture of you. I don’t want anyone getting overzealous and looking for you in the public broadcast footage.”

“All right.”

I grabbed another Coke from the fridge and went back to the living room, where the computer wouldn’t argue with me, ask me questions, or do anything but help me clear my head. George was still quiet, her normally constant presence numbed to a dull ache at the back of my skull. It didn’t hurt, precisely. It just felt weird as hell.

The computer woke at the touch of a finger. I navigated the company log-in menus to reach my mailbox, which was comfortingly overfull of spam, date offers, naked pictures, suggestions of things that would make good articles, and the seemingly obligatory elevator pitches on places I should go and dead things I should bother. Sometimes it seems like the entire world is out to get me back into the field. What they don’t understand—and I can’t tell them—is that I’ve lost one of the integral traits of a good Irwin: I’m not having any fun. When I wind up in the field, it’s a chore to be survived, not an adventure to be relished. Without that little spark of gosh-golly-wow to drive me on, I’m essentially a dead man walking. Don’t think I don’t see the irony. George is the one who stopped breathing, but I’m the one who gave up on living.

The forums were as big a mess as I’d expected from Alaric’s report. The moderators were trying to be six places at once, and failing pretty spectacularly. I sat back for a few minutes sipping my Coke and watching the message notifications as they popped up next to thread after thread. The team currently on duty were all beta bloggers, trying to prove their credentials by doing the sort of shit job that George and I used to do back when we were still bylines on the Bridge Supporters site. In those days, we couldn’t think of anything we wanted more than to be out on our own, telling the stories we wanted to tell, not answering to anybody but ourselves.

“Look at where that got us,” I muttered, leaning forward in the chair and reaching for the mouse. “Stay where you are, guys. You’ll be a hell of a lot happier in the long run.”

George didn’t say anything, and kept not saying anything as I went back to my in-box and started skimming, looking for messages that actually needed my attention. I needed to start editing footage. I needed to post and let people know that I was still alive, but most of all, and first of all, I needed to calm down a little bit. My heartbeat was starting to speed up as my body realized that the running away was over—we’d reached our destination, and now it was finally safe for me to freak out.

My hand was shaking. I sat perfectly still, waiting for the tremors to pass. I didn’t have time for another breakdown. One a month is about my limit, and since this one was unlikely to come with the extra-bonus “full visual hallucinations of your dead sister,” I didn’t see the point of doing it again. Eventually, the shaking stopped, and I started again.

I hit Important when I was halfway down my in-box. It was buried in thread updates, private messages from the moderators, and random posts from my mailing lists, and I almost didn’t click because I didn’t recognize the sender’s e-mail address. “Who the fuck uses ‘TauntedOctopus’ for a handle, anyway?” I asked myself. It wasn’t entirely a rhetorical question. I was hoping the sheer stupidity of it would be enough to make George speak up.

Instead, it was enough to make me stop, swear, and open the message. Who uses “TauntedOctopus” as a handle? Probably a woman who wears T-shirts telling you not to do it. Dr. Abbey.

From: TauntedOctopus@redacted.cn.com

To: Shaun.Mason@aftertheendtimes.com

Subject: Aren’t you a busy boy?

I admit I was surprised when I heard that the Portland CDC had been overrun by the infected less than twenty-four hours after you left me. You don’t waste time, and I respect that. Then again, it’s not like you have much time to waste. You’re not the only one who knows how to operate a camera, and I bet you dollars to donuts that somebody got footage of you and your little band of Merry Men on the trek out here. It’s just a matter of time before somebody figures out we were in contact, and then the shit you’re in will be so deep that it’ll make your current shit look like chocolate pudding. Don’t come back. We started tearing down the lab as soon as you left, and by the time you get this message (assuming you live long enough to get this message, which is by no means guaranteed), we’ll be on our way to a new location. The little “arrangement” I have with the CDC depends on a certain status quo, and you’re playing in dangerous enough waters that I can’t count on it right now. So hurry up and get your answers or get yourselves killed, will you?

The attachments on this message contain everything I’ve done to date involving mapping the structure of Kellis-Amberlee against the autoimmune oddities that cause the formation of stable reservoir conditions. I don’t have a mechanism for reversing them, or a reliable way to induce them in adult subjects, but there’s more than enough to prove that reservoir conditions are the result of the immune system beginning to learn to cope under supposedly impossible conditions. Most of the research won’t make any sense to you, but it’ll make perfect sense to the little CDC flunky who introduced us. Make sure she sees it. Tell her it all goes public if you think she’s holding out on you. See what she has to say after that.

You’re a brave idiot, Shaun Mason, and I’m sorry I never got to meet your sister. Almost as sorry as I am that you never got to meet my husband. Give my regards to the Merry Men, and tell them to sleep with one eye open, because you’re well on the way to pissing off some pretty damn important people. Good for you. Keep doing what you’re doing. Somebody has to.

Best wishes, and stay the fuck away from me,

Dr. Shannon L. Abbey

A flare of guilt rose, washed over me, and died as I contemplated the fact that talking to us cost Dr. Abbey her lab. She knew what she was doing when she let us through her door. Maybe she didn’t invite us to come for a visit, but once we were there, she was perfectly happy to tell us what she knew. If she wasn’t going to blame us for showing up, I wasn’t going to feel bad for doing it.

The attachments on her message downloaded clean, and they opened to reveal huge, detailed medl charts and graphs that made about as much sense as abstract art. I recognized some of the labels, but that was about it. That was okay because Dr. Abbey was right: It didn’t matter if her research made sense to me. What mattered was that her research would make sense to Kelly, and once she’d seen it, maybe she’d know